Here's a thorough look into the technology powering Magic Leap's mysterious 'mixed reality' headset

What is Magic Leap?

Other than "the company that Google co-funded to the tune of $500 million," no one really knows. There have been no press tours, no "development kits," no big Kickstarter campaigns. The company's CEO Rony Abovitz describes Magic Leap as a "techno-biology" company. Only two journalists have ever tried Magic Leap's "mixed reality" headset — whatever it is.

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For a company that's raised over $1 billion from high profile investors, that has one of Google's most important employees sitting on its board (Sundar Pinchai, the man in charge of all Google consumer products), Magic Leap has been amazingly quiet. Here's the long and short: Magic Leap is a technology company in Florida that's creating some form of "mixed reality" headset. The headset uses what are essentially tiny projectors to mix artificially-created light with the world in front of you – it "augments" the reality you see by beaming visuals directly into your eyeballs.

Magic Leap believes this technology will change computing. Magic Leap believes its headset will kill off screens in general, from your home TV to your mobile phone (and everything in between). That remains to be seen.

In July 2015, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published the most thorough patent application that Magic Leap has produced, complete with ridiculous drawings of what Magic Leap's headset is potentially capable of doing. As a reminder, patent applications are not indicative of final products necessarily. That being said, let's dive into the 185-page application to see what Magic Leap is up to.

The Google Glass look.

The first drawing in the patent application is what you see here: some sort of glasses-mounted device with a wire hanging from it, enabling the user to see a computer-generated image in their left eye. Is this what Magic Leap is making? Almost certainly not, but it does offer a glimpse into the kind of experience the company wants to offer. 

Watch out for that giant robot!

The second drawing is all about representing how Magic Leap's headset will work. The person wearing the headset sees the giant robot and the floating bee character, but no one else does. The headset is "augmenting" the wearer's reality by adding a massive robot statue and a bizarrely human bee.

An example of what Magic Leap doesn't want to make.

In the third drawing, a headset is shown with two displays intended to trick the eyes. This is essentially how virtual reality headsets work. 

Magic Leap president Rony Abovitz has repeatedly stated his disinterest in this type of solution. That's evident in the drawing's description from the patent: "Such configurations have been found to be uncomfortable for many users due to a mismatch between vergence [how eyes turn] and accommodation which must be overcome to perceive the images in three dimensions."

All that to say this is most certainly not Magic Leap's solution.